


Climate Change

by penlex



Series: little cuts [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Casket of Ancient Winters, Fantastic Racism, Fluff, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Light Angst, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 15:54:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16537637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penlex/pseuds/penlex
Summary: Loki is happy to deliver his reparations to Earth. He just doesn't want Thor to see him do it.





	Climate Change

**Author's Note:**

> Again, wrote this on my phone.

Loki and Thor stand together on the flat expanse of a frozen tundra. There are politicians and press (mostly press) at their backs in a crowded half circle. The humans are dressed formally, but their suits and dresses are hidden away under ugly coats, their hair and makeup obscured from view by hats and scarves. Loki and Thor on the other hand still cut impressive silhouettes, metallic highlights catching the glaring sun, since Aesir formal wear includes all the covering and warmth they could need.

Not, of course, that Loki in fact needs it, after all.

The Iron Man and the Black Panther are also here, witnesses and the first line of defense in case Loki is a big liar. (Loki is a big liar, but he doesn't currently bear any ill will or megalomaniacal designs, so it doesn't particularly matter or pose any threat. But it's always better safe than sorry, so he doesn't begrudge them their security measures, feeble as he might find them.)

Loki and Thor continue forward, up a negligible slope, and the rest remain slightly behind and below. When he and his brother reach the crest of this snowy little hill, Loki looks into the horizon. There is mirth in this. He finds it preferable to any of the alternative feelings that might be present in him. It'll be easier to focus on when he brings it to Thor's attention.

"What are you waiting for?" Thor asks, right on cue. He doesn't even sound impatient though. Curious, perhaps just a touch long-suffering. But though he can - within reason - predict Loki's behavior, he seems not to immediately judge it any longer. He truly has changed. Loki knew that, vaguely. But now he finds himself... eager to get to know Thor. As if he is an intriguingly familiar stranger. But that can wait for later. Now... just a little bit more of the same.

"Oh, I just want us to take a brief second to appreciate the irony of this moment," Loki says, shooting Thor a curling smirk. "The King of Asgard, condoning a Frost Giant using the Casket of Ancient Winters to alter the climate of poor defenseless Midgard." Thor rolls his eyes but he wears a small smile, and he doesn't flinch when Loki brings the Casket forward from his extra dimensional pocket.

"Aren't you concerned I'll overdo it?" Loki goads lightly. "Going to warn me off of inviting any friends?" Thor's smile is having some trouble maintaining its size.

"I'd be more worried if I thought you had any of those," he teases back.

"Ouch," Loki says. He tries to pout, but he can't keep a little giggle from messing it up. "You wound me, brother. Truly. I'm hurt."

"Uh huh," Thor says. He gestures before them at the ice, thinner than it looks. "Just get to it, would you. I know you're unaffected, but I'm getting chilly. I want hot coffee."

Loki's mirth gradually melts away like so much of their surroundings. He turns his face away from Thor as much as he can without making it obvious to hide the way his smile chokes and dies. He grips the Casket in both hands. The dreaded blue creeps and crawls its way up Loki's hands and wrists, leaking up underneath the sleeves of his leathers. There isn't any sensation that goes with it, but Loki imagines one there anyway - a chill, a numbness, a stinging irritation. It's all in his head. A _perceived wrong_.

"Loki, come on. What now?" Ah, there is Thor's impatience. Perhaps he is not so much a stranger after all. Loki struggles to come up with some other joke or annoyance to ply Thor with, to misdirect him, but his silver tongue fails him. The tales of it have always been a touch exaggerated. In fact, Loki has to swallow several times before he can speak at all.

"Look away," he mutters, resentful of his own vulnerability. This shouldn't matter to him anymore. But it does. Loki dreads that he too will become a stranger to Thor but in a bad way - again - when Thor sees... him.

"What?" Thor asks, though his scraped out tone and the absolute _tragedy_ of an expression that sits on his face both make it clear that he heard Loki just fine.

"Look away," Loki repeats anyway. He keeps his voice and his face as flat as he can. He refuses to beg or plead. (Not genuinely, anyway. To sell a lie, he'd do anything.)

" _Loki_." Thor's tone is gratingly gentle, and not a little hurt - though it's the kind of hurt Loki always finds it hard to tell if it's on Thor's own behalf, or his. "You must know I wouldn't- do anything..."

"Of course I know that," Loki snaps impatiently. The cold handles of the Casket bite into his palms where he squeezes far too hard. The temperature would freeze the hands of another Loki knows, but to him it's soothing - or it would be, should be.

"Then why-" Thor starts to ask, takes a step forward and reaches out. But Loki jerks out of range, and interrupts.

"Because I hate it!" He voice is higher and louder than he intended it. The crowd of press expand the distance between them. Iron Man tenses, repulsors whirring with charge, but the Black Panther doesn't so much as shift his weight from one foot to the other. He must somehow be able to tell that this is a helpless crying sort of anger, rather than a murder and explosions kind.

"Because I hate it. I hate it so much I went crazy and killed Idunn only knows how many and then threw myself off of a bridge rather than accept it. But it's me and there's nothing I can do about it!" Loki gasps in a great breath, and then another and another. He grits his teeth and shuts tight his eyes and keeps himself reigned back in with effort when he notices the layer of frost that has grown from his hands to cover the Casket and his own sleeves up to the elbows.

"I am both the thing I hate and the thing that hates me," Loki continues in a tenuously calmer voice. "So if you look upon me with hatred, you must be my better in race. But if you look upon me without hatred, then you must be my better in character. Either way, I am right and I suffer. It's better if you just don't look at all."

"Alright," Thor concedes softly. When Loki pries open his eyes it's to see his brother holding up his hands placatingly. "I will look away. But Loki, for the record, know that my reaction would be... in between those."

Loki lifts an eyebrow, inquisitive. "In between?" He doesn't know exactly what Thor means, but whatever it is Loki doubts it.

"When I saw you at first, in your Jotunn skin, I would think all the things I was taught to think," Thor explains. He sounds guilty in some grown-up, responsible way that Loki doesn't think he's ever heard before (not from Thor, and not anyone else either). "And then I would remember that none of those things were ever true. It takes growth and time to go from one to the other."

And then Thor turns his back. He doesn't hesitate or wait for Loki to react to his words. There is no expectation for Loki to change his mind, and if Thor has the desire for that he does a good job concealing it. Loki watches his brother's back for long moments, but then he turns away too.

Finally, Loki raises the Casket of Ancient Winters and inflicts its magic upon the land and sea and air of Earth. It's not actually a permanent fix as he called it at their initial hearing, but there have been more meetings since (and meetings and meetings and meetings, Great Yggdrasil the people of this planet endure so many cursed meetings) and together Loki and Thor had explained in more accurate detail what the Casket would do. Loki is extending the livable climate of the Earth for at least a few hundred more years. Now if only the unfortunate common folk can manage to get their idiot rulers to do the same within their own capabilities.

Loki doesn't feel himself change from Aesir in appearance to Jotunn, only knows it to have happened the same way he always knows whether his magic has worked or not. He doesn't look at himself any more than he has allowed Thor to look, so there is little difference that he can discern with his other five senses. The distance between his head and the ground increases, just enough to be notable. The glare from the sun on the snow halves, and the ice and ocean in the distance become more defined and less blue. Loki feels the temperature drop, and then drop some more. When it starts to snow, Loki stops.

Loki looks at Thor's waiting back from the corner of his (red) eyes. He doesn't turn fully around, wanting to avoid being caught in any clear photographs. But he considers, for long moments, telling Thor to turn around and look. He even takes a breath and opens his mouth to say it, twice, before he decides against it.

He feels like a coward, for just a second, before he remembers the way Thor spoke before turning around. His voice, heavy but gentle, acknowledging a great wrong but without the sharpness of blame.

It takes growth and time to go from one to the other, he'd said.

Loki has grown, if not as much as Thor. And it seems now he has time. He's not ready yet. But he will be. He can show Thor later.

They don't have to stay strangers forever.


End file.
